


Sooner or Later

by serannamyASS



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers for The Stolen Century, a lil sad i guess, my gal is a brolly, tbh spoilers for the whole of taz if you've not listened to the full thing, tho this is just my guess at what went down for lup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 04:23:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11372511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serannamyASS/pseuds/serannamyASS
Summary: Don’t think about them,she tells herself.And just like that, she can’t.





	Sooner or Later

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE: In light of ep 67, I need to add a disclaimer that I TOTALLY KNOW this is inaccurate. But I hope you enjoy it anyways :^)

_BACK SOON…_

Her gauntlet is safe. Or so she hopes.

Lup has been tracking its whereabouts for days. All the evidence has led her to this location. And now here she is, standing in a chamber in front of a large, round metal door. So far the security in this place has been pretty lax. All she has to do is figure out how to open this last door, and she’ll be able to reclaim the gauntlet. If it’s there. She hopes it is. She needs to take it out of circulation. It’s caused too much destruction already.

Taking down her hood, she examines the door. No handle, nothing. She wishes, suddenly, and not for the first time, that she hadn’t come here alone. Too many cooks can spoil a broth, but when it comes to overly complicated mechanisms…

_I couldn’t have asked them. It’s my creation. My decision. My responsibility. I’ll figure it out._

She taps the door with her umbrastaff, half expecting an alarm to go off. But nothing happens. She groans and scuffs her boot against the ground in frustration. What would Barry do? Or Lucretia? Or even Taako?

 _Don’t think about them,_ Lup scolds herself. Because to think of her family would make her homesick, and she can’t afford to walk out now. She can’t think of Taako’s laugh, or Barry’s lips, or Lucretia’s soft hands making delicate lines from Lup’s own features upon the margins of her journal.

 _Don’t think about them,_ she tells herself.

And just like that, she can’t.

“Think about who?” she mutters aloud, at first bewildered, and then terribly, sickeningly frightened. Frantically she turns away from the door and searches her memory. But her… friends? They’re slipping away from her. She can’t remember them, their voices, their faces. She can’t remember all the years they’d spent together, can’t remember… _anything._

 _Why am I here? Where_ is _here?_

She’d come to retrieve something. Something she made? She looks at the thing in her hand, her – her umbr… _ella?_ Static roars in her brain, and the – _thing?_ – goes all fuzzy. She has to sit down. She slumps with her back to the wall, pulls her hood up, and waits. She’s not well. Her head hurts. Someone will come for her soon. Won’t they?

But no one comes to Lup’s aid. Still, she remains against that same wall, head empty of everything and everyone she loved, eyes on the entrance, certain that someone will find her soon. And as starvation makes her weak and death slowly begins to claim her, she starts to recall certain things. Whispers of memory breeze through her mind. An echoing laugh she can’t place, a sensation on her upper lip, the scratching of a pencil…

Days whirl into nights and she can’t tell either apart. She dreams she’s flying. She dreams she’s eating a gorgeous breakfast. She dreams she’s making music, beautiful music. She dreams… And then she’s dead. In her lich form, everything hits her at once. Lup knows instantly what must have happened; what Lucretia must have done. And, miraculously, she does not feel angry, but desperately, inconsolably sad.

***

Someone is trying to eat her robe.

_Taako._

She almost can't believe it's him. It’s been so long, so long, and now, finally, her brother has found her. He has come to her rescue.

 _Or not,_ Lup reminds herself, because he can’t know who she is anymore. And even if he does remember her, he'd never recognise her now. Her body has wasted away, leaving nothing save her bones shielded by red robes, and her umbrastaff, still clutched tight in her skeletal hand. She is a part of them, and yet not – she is weakened, both emotionally and metaphysically. She has been clinging to the memory of the great days Taako and Barry gave her, replaying them over and over, just to keep herself anchored to, well, _herself,_ and has had precious little energy for anything else.

What has Taako been doing all this time? Where has he been? _How_ has he been? Who has he been _with?_ She longs to ask him, her heart, all these questions and more, but she can’t. Not now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

Someone else approaches her.

 _Merle._ And behind him, at the door, a stranger, and with them… _Magnus._

Lup is confused. Why are these three here, together, but without the others? Where is Barry? Lucretia? Davenport? Do they remember one another? Has Lucretia reversed…? No. No, that’s not it. Taako would’ve recognised her robes and staff immediately, even if he couldn't recognise _her._

Merle grips her umbrastaff and casts _detect magic._

“So what kind of vibe do you get from it?” Taako asks him once he’s done.

“I’m kinda, uh, mind-blown right now,” says Merle. “It’s kind of hard for me to – to concentrate. I think I oughta wrap this in something and carry it instead of holdin’ onto it.”

“Well wrap it in the robe, that’s a good idea.”

“Oh, let’s wrap it in the robe.”

“Wrap it in the robe and bring it along!”

It’s a delight to hear their voices again. Lup longs to throw her arms around them all. Merle unfastens the robe from her skeleton, then wraps it over the curved handle of the umbrastaff. At this moment, Lup has an idea.

_Sometimes you hold the umbrella, sometimes it holds you._

Combining her own power with that of her staff, she blasts Merle halfway across the room. And just as she’d hoped, Taako takes this as a challenge. He grabs hold of the umbrastaff.

Electricity bursts from the staff, from Taako, and Lup forces her skeletal head up to look him in the eyes. He hasn’t changed much. His hair is longer. His eyeliner is smudged. _Dummy,_ she thinks. He always forgets he has it on…

She lets him take the umbrastaff. But at the same time she uses the rest of her energy to funnel her essence _into_ it. She becomes the staff, and the staff becomes her. She’s not letting him – or the others – go ever again.

 _You better not sell me,_ she thinks, as her former body disintegrates behind her.

He pauses, considers her. “…So now I have an umbrella.”

__

_…ER OR LATER._


End file.
